Do you have a LinkedIn profile?
If you’re a business or sales professional, the answer is almost certainly yes. It’s your digital business card. When you apply for a job or contact a sales prospect, what’s the first thing they do? They check out your LinkedIn profile, don’t they? And you do the same.
Your LinkedIn profile establishes your credibility and provides insights into the people you might work with.
A question: Does your company own your LinkedIn profile, or do you?
You do, of course! Your profile follows you throughout your career, showcasing your experiences, growth, business philosophy, and network.
So why would you let your company own your AI Assistant, Co-Pilot, or Agent?
Shouldn’t you own your AI Agent?
Think about it: What happens if you leave your company, and they own your AI Agent? All the time and effort you spent training and refining it stays with them. You’d have to start over, retraining a new agent at your next job.
Here’s why you should own your AI Agent—and why your company should support that ownership:
1. Ownership Drives Investment
· LinkedIn: When you own your LinkedIn profile, you invest time and effort in curating content, building your brand, and engaging authentically with your network. This personal investment benefits both you and your employer.
· AI Agent: Similarly, owning your AI Agent incentivizes you to train and develop it to reflect your unique selling style, strategies, and experiences. Your investment enhances the agent’s value, making it a lifelong career asset.
· Company Benefit: Hiring and developing your sales assets should include plans for both the sales professional and their agents. Supported by their Agents, they on-board in a fraction of the time and consistently expand their productive capacity. They also engage your customers on a more human and strategic way with a trained Agent as opposed to a standard one.
2. Portability Encourages Long-Term Growth
· LinkedIn: Your LinkedIn profile is yours, no matter where you work. It serves as a continuous tool for networking, learning, and sharing insights.
· AI Agent: When you own your AI Agent, it moves with you across roles and companies. This continuity enables you to develop your Agent on your expertise, helping you to adapt quickly in new environments, and scale your impact as you grow in your career.
· Company Benefit: Supporting the ownership and development of your employee’s AI Agents is investing in their personal development. A well-trained Agent not only expands the productive capacity of their work but can also act as a training & development resource creating more loyalty through career development.
3. Ownership Fosters Innovation
· LinkedIn: Your LinkedIn profile allows you to share your authentic voice and creative ideas, building trust and relatability with your network.
· AI Agent: Owning your AI Agent empowers you to adapt its capabilities to different buyers, contexts, and strategies. This flexibility fosters innovation, enabling you to go beyond rigid playbooks and actively shape deal strategies that align with buyer needs.
· Company Benefit: Your sales team engages with your customers on a humane level. Their Agent will reflect the style and ‘voice’ of their owners and not just facilitating standard, corporate sales execution. Of course, if you want to simply deploy sales robots and avatars then you don’t need salespeople so this is not an issue for you.
4. It’s a Win-Win for Employers
· LinkedIn: When employees share knowledge and insights on LinkedIn, their companies benefit from increased visibility and credibility.
· AI Agent: Similarly, sales professionals who own their AI Agents are more likely to optimize and refine them, leading to better sales outcomes. Companies benefit from having capable, adaptable, and motivated salespeople—even if the agents are individually owned.
· Company Benefit: Want to attract A-Player Sales Professionals? The best will have their own AI Agents. Want to keep them? Support them in developing their agents capabilities.
5. Ownership Strengthens Human Connection
· LinkedIn: A LinkedIn profile reflects your personality, expertise, and unique value, helping you build trust and credibility in your market.
· AI Agent: A personalized AI Agent becomes an extension of your unique approach and strengths, enabling deeper connections with buyers. By tailoring strategies to each buyer’s needs, your AI Agent helps you stand out as a trusted advisor.
· Company Benefit: A well-trained agent will take care of a lot of the repetitive sales work enabling your Sales Professionals to spend most of their time engaging with the Buyer’s on strategies for maximizing their investment in your offering. This deeper work builds stronger relationships that facilitate both the Buyer’s & Seller’s revenue growth.
But What About Oversight?
Of course, there are challenges. Sales professionals owning their AI Agents raises questions about oversight, ethical standards, and alignment with company goals. These issues require thoughtful solutions—but that’s a topic for another essay.
The Takeaway
If you’re a sales professional, it’s time to start developing your own AI Agent. And if you’re a business or sales leader, it’s in your best interest to support your team in doing so.
In Summary
Ownership fosters responsibility, creativity, innovation, and long-term value. By enabling sales professionals to own their AI Agents, a company they work for will align with the evolving dynamics of the workforce. You may even start using fractional salespeople in your business model. Or, maybe business golf & dinners will make a comeback so best have those humans prepared.
For Sales Professionals, just like your LinkedIn profile, owning your AI Agent is about more than control. It’s about empowerment. Your agent becomes an extension of you, enhancing your ability to succeed in any environment.
The future of Enterprise Sales isn’t just about having AI—it’s about owning it.
Navigation: This was written while listening to “This Damn Song” by Pecos & the Rooftops.
Artwork: Last Bloom by Elwood Howell. Peace.
This was a fun read John. The LinkedIn comparison is an interesting one. LinkedIn information has really no corporate IP but I wonder if the AI agent could collect more sensitive corporate info that companies would be more concerned about. I agree the AI sales agent could be super valuable in a sales career. Thanks for making me think!!